Posted on 05/20/2017 10:29:40 PM PDT by LibWhacker
PeterPrinciple: "Spontaneous generation has continually been proven wrong.
Accepted scientific principle.
Life begats life."
Nobody today talks about the old "spontaneous generation", but complex chemistry is seen to evolve naturally and that has lead to much new research.
Beyond Pasteur in 1862 and Miller-Urey 1950s experiments, much more has been learned in recent decades.
So there are any number of new books on this subject and ones I've read include:
Thanks for posting, Joe.
One question...
Since the Earth and meteorites all formed from microscopic dust particles and gas, wouldn’t the rate of radioactive decay measure when the dust and gas was created by a supernova, and NOT the date when the dust and gas coalesced into planets and meteoroids?
Thanks for explaining this.
Re: No living organism directly utilizes fire as a primary biological energy source.
Yes, you make a good point.
On the other hand, I felt the author was saying that land animals could not have evolved into their current size without the after effects of fire.
Like the wooly mammoth, during the ice ages.
Or the African and Indian Elephants, or the giraffe and hippopotamus.
All dependent on cooking for their size...?
Now, if you were talking about the average feminist American land whale...
Hmm Bro. I’m going to have to buy those books.
oh yeah, the all ‘agree’...especially when you start with unprovable assumptions about the starting quantities of argon, etc, et al...and then you throw out the wildly off ages...dismiss them with a wave of your hand...you know, accuracy...etc...
nice try...
now, back to the altar of darwin with you...
Great question.
If I ever see an answer, will pass it along to you. ;-)
Radiometric dating merely measures the time elapsed since the material's clock was last "reset", whenever that happened or however it came about.
For example, Carbon-14 with a half-life around 6,000 years is useful to measure back about 60,000 years ago.
Other radiometric materials with half-lives in the millions & billions of years can measure back much further.
Naturally, if you reject, as you say, "unprovable assumptions", then you won't accept their conclusions.
However, those assumptions are reasonable and their conclusions consistent across dozens of measuring methodologies.
That's why from a scientific perspective they are pretty convincing.
But your taunting with "the altar of darwin" is uncalled for, since science strictly defined is the opposite of any religion.
The only thing you need to overthrow even the most "settled" scientific idea is confirmed data or better ideas which falsify it.
Insults carry no scientific weight, FRiend.
sorry, fake science carries no scientific weight either my friend. now, back to your Humanist Altar.
What you call "fake science" is just normal science whose assumptions, data & conclusions you don't like, for reasons which have nothing to do with science itself.
But here now in your second post you again seem obsessed with a fake "alter", so I'm guessing there's something about alters which make you just a little bit crazy?
Do you need help with that?
Maybe some counseling, FRiend?
Nobody today talks about the old “spontaneous generation”, but complex chemistry is seen to evolve naturally and that has lead to much new research.
And yes, new research than continues to prove life begets life. Your so called chemistry is under highly controlled lab conditions that don’t exist in nature. and your chemical reactions independent of multiple systems goes no where.
So tell me why it is so offensive to live with scientific results that life begets life?
Once you accept this result then you can be a real scientist like George Washington Carver:
When I was young, I said to God, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the universe.’ But God answered, ‘That knowledge is for me alone.’ So I said, ‘God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.’ Then God said, ‘Well George, that’s more nearly your size.’ And he told me.
In your first sentence here you may have inadvertently recognized the power of word definitions.
In this case the question: what exactly is life?
Is a virus alive? I think not in any ordinary sense.
What about the prions which cause Mad Cow disease?
Certainly not, yes, it's complex organic chemistry to be sure, but not alive in our ordinary sense of that term.
So the question is, can complex organic chemistry evolve enough life-like features for us to classify it as living?
Of course, if you reject the very idea of evolution then necessarily your answer will be "no".
But much of today's speculations revolve around how that might have happened.
Yes, it's all speculation -- hypotheses, not theories, much less observed facts.
But it's pretty interesting stuff, I think, and we learn much from it.
The two books I posted are just two among many others you'll find in my link to Amazon.com.
PeterPrinciple: "And yes, new research than continues to prove life begets life.
Your so called chemistry is under highly controlled lab conditions that dont exist in nature.
and your chemical reactions independent of multiple systems goes no where."
What recent experiments show is that under certain natural conditions, such as those expected in early Earth, organic chemistry will "complexify" (I hate that word, but what other is there?), meaning grow larger and more feature rich.
Yes, many, many "complexifications" are needed for mere chemistry to become life-like, but that's the path they study.
PeterPrinciple: "So tell me why it is so offensive to live with scientific results that life begets life?"
Not in the least "offensive", but the question is how, exactly, do we define the word "life".
At the molecular levels of prions and viruses, "life" can be pretty hard to define, subject to interpretations and changeable with new understanding.
So let me ask you: why do you find it so "offensive" to consider certain complex organic molecules as "pre-life"?
PeterPrinciple: "When I was young, I said to God, God, tell me the mystery of the universe.
But God answered, That knowledge is for me alone.
So I said, God, tell me the mystery of the peanut.
Then God said, Well George, thats more nearly your size.
And he told me."
Great story! That's exactly how science works, thanks.
Assuming that life did not parachute in, fully formed, from elsewhere, a number of authors12,13,14,15 have argued that the transition from non-life to life took place in the context of geochemical energy, with the ability to harness sunlight evolving later (Fig. 1). Consistent with this, both phylogenetic16 and biochemical13,17 evidence suggest that the earliest life forms were chemoautotrophs, perhaps living by reacting hydrogen with carbon dioxide and giving off acetate, methane and water13,16. Mounting evidence18,19,20,21,22 suggests that the transition from non-life to life may have taken place before 3.7 Gaa time from which few rocks remain23.
central_va: "I am not saying I have the answers but this is gobbledygook.
I know BS when I see it."
Not total BS, but admittedly speculation, hypotheses based on very detailed observations and some experiments.
So when might natural organic chemistry have "complexified" into biology -- was it 3.7 billion years ago?
Maybe, but that all depends on your definition of "life".
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